--- title: Microsoft Ignite 2025 - KEY01 Keynote description: Executive summary of the Microsoft Ignite 2025 opening keynote covering Frontier Firms, AI agents, Work IQ/Fabric IQ/Foundry IQ, and major product announcements event: Microsoft Ignite dates: November 17-21, 2025 session: KEY01 location: San Francisco source: https://medius.microsoft.com/video/asset/Transcript/27fe9390-aeff-4411-96f8-6e4f87758ddc downloaded: 2025-11-24 version: normalized tags: [ai, agents, copilot, m365-copilot, azure-copilot, security-copilot, frontier-firms, work-iq, fabric-iq, foundry-iq, github-copilot, copilot-studio, app-builder, low-code, agent-365, observability, governance, anthropic, claude, model-router, healthcare, epic, dax-copilot, mercedes-benz, ubs, linkedin, azure, aks-automatic, cosmos-db, horizondb, fabric, onelake, defender, purview, entra, adobe, nvidia, gb300, sustainability, industry-solutions, enterprise-ai, digital-transformation, productivity] --- # Microsoft Ignite 2025 - KEY01 Keynote ## Executive Summary Microsoft's opening keynote at Ignite 2025, delivered by Judson Althoff (CEO, Microsoft Commercial Business) and featuring 40+ speakers including Ryan Roslansky (LinkedIn CEO), Scott Guthrie (Azure), and industry leaders from Epic, Mercedes-Benz, UBS, and Adobe, introduced the concept of "Frontier Firms" and announced over 70 new capabilities across the Microsoft AI and cloud platform. The keynote defined Frontier Firms as organizations that move beyond AI transformation to frontier transformation through three key traits: (1) AI in the flow of human ambition, embedded in daily tools rather than isolated chat windows, (2) ubiquitous innovation empowering every employee to create agents and solutions, and (3) comprehensive observability and governance across all AI deployments. These traits are built on two foundational pillars: intelligence (Work IQ, Fabric IQ, Foundry IQ) and trust (observability, safety, governance). Major announcements included Anthropic Claude models joining Microsoft Foundry, Agent 365 control plane for managing enterprise agents, general availability of AKS Automatic, new Azure HorizonDB PostgreSQL service, 5-minute pod readiness SLA for AKS, App Builder for creating apps inside M365 Copilot, and Azure's deployment of NVIDIA GB300 GPUs at data center scale. Live demonstrations showcased M365 Copilot Agents (Word, Excel, PowerPoint), Azure Copilot for infrastructure management, Security Copilot for threat detection, GitHub Copilot Agent HQ, and multi-agent workflows built on Foundry with Work IQ integration. Industry applications highlighted healthcare (Epic), automotive (Mercedes-Benz), financial services (UBS), agriculture (Land O'Lakes), industrial automation (Siemens), consumer goods (Nestlé), education (São Paulo), retail (Telstra), and biotech (Insilico Medicine). --- ## Three Traits of Frontier Firms ### 1. AI in the Flow of Human Ambition **Concept:** AI must be embedded directly within the tools people use daily (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Teams, Azure portal, VS Code) rather than requiring context-switching to separate chat interfaces. **Implementation:** - M365 Copilot with Work IQ understands users, their work, and organizational context - Agent Mode in Excel and PowerPoint generates dynamic formulas, charts, and content - Azure Copilot Agents diagnose and fix Kubernetes, Cosmos DB, and infrastructure issues - Security Copilot embedded in Defender triages threats and explains reasoning - GitHub Copilot integrated throughout development workflow with Agent HQ **Work IQ Foundation:** Work IQ is the intelligence layer that enables Copilot and agents to understand business context through three components: - **Data:** Emails, documents, databases, line-of-business systems - **Memory:** Personalized responses based on user style, habits, preferences, and relationships - **Inference:** Pattern detection, reasoning, and contextual awareness across organizational workflows Work IQ operates in real time across all M365 data while respecting existing permissions, providing capabilities beyond traditional connectors that only retrieve data fragments without context. **Key Difference from Connectors:** - Work IQ: Real-time access with full context, pattern recognition, relationship understanding, complete answers - Connectors: Fragmented data pulls, no context, incomplete information, permission gaps ### 2. Ubiquitous Innovation **Principle:** Every employee becomes a maker capable of creating AI artifacts, agents, and applications in the flow of work. The person closest to a problem is empowered to solve it. **Three Innovation Tiers:** **Individual Makers - App Builder (New Announcement):** - Create fully functioning apps inside M365 Copilot using natural language - Auto-generates apps from existing M365 data (documents, spreadsheets, meetings) - No coding required - describe requirements in conversational language - Apps can be shared like documents across the organization - Demo: Store manager built staff scheduling app in minutes from spoken requirements **Domain Experts - Copilot Studio:** - Low-code agent builder with native Work IQ access - 230,000+ organizations using Copilot Studio (90% of Fortune 500) - Create agents triggered by events (emails, Teams messages, scheduled tasks) - Integrate with Microsoft Foundry agents and external systems - Connect to SharePoint, Microsoft Graph, line-of-business apps - Demo: Operations manager created automated shift replacement agent combining Copilot Studio flows with Foundry agents **Professional Developers - GitHub Copilot:** - Evolved from pair programmer to fleet of coding agents - GitHub Copilot is the single largest contributor to GitHub codebase - **Agent HQ (New):** Centralized management for all coding tasks and agent sessions - Agents work autonomously on issues, creating branches and pull requests - Multi-model support including custom fine-tuned models - **Copilot Metrics (New):** Enterprise visibility into usage, models, programming languages - **Defender + GitHub Advanced Security Integration (New):** Code-to-cloud vulnerability remediation with runtime data filtering and automated fix campaigns ### 3. Observability and Governance **Challenge:** IDC predicts 1.3 billion agents deployed globally by 2028. Organizations need visibility, control, and security across all agents regardless of origin. **Agent 365 - The Agent Control Plane (New Announcement):** **Five Core Capabilities:** 1. **Enterprise Agent Registry:** Complete visibility into all agents across the organization 2. **Access Control Enforcement:** Ensures compliant data and system access as work moves between people, agents, and apps 3. **Usage Analytics and Risk Assessment:** Centralized agent estate management with risk scoring 4. **Secure Interoperability:** Safe agent communication with data, apps, and collaboration tools 5. **Threat Detection and Response:** Proactive security with data loss prevention and identity protection **Platform Integration:** - M365 Admin Center for centralized agent management - Agent registry tracks publishers (internal, external partners), platforms (Copilot Studio, Foundry, Workday, ServiceNow, Google, Amazon), usage patterns - Agent Risk View highlights security concerns (abnormal sign-ins, risky users, compliance gaps) - Approval workflows for new agent requests with permission review - Agent Map visualizes inter-agent relationships, dependencies, and hotspots - Integration with existing Microsoft security tools (Defender, Purview, Entra) **Foundry Control Plane (New Announcement):** Developer-focused observability for agents built on Microsoft Foundry: - Error and exception tracking with prioritized alerts - Evaluation metrics: groundedness (1-5 scale), task adherence, task completion, pass rates - Guardrails to block unsafe actions, detect jailbreak attempts, enforce constraints - Model switching recommendations for cost optimization (demo: 13x cost savings by switching from GPT-4.1 to GPT-4o mini) - Playground for testing and debugging agent behaviors - MCP server configuration management **Security Integration Across Defender, Purview, Entra:** - Jailbreak attempt detection and blocking at Foundry layer - Phishing protection for agent-targeted attacks - Sensitive data access prevention with policy enforcement - Cross-product incident investigation with unified threat graph - Real-time signal sharing between Foundry, Defender, and Purview - 100+ trillion security signals daily informing threat intelligence --- ## Two Foundational Pillars ### Intelligence: IQ Architecture **Work IQ** - Intelligence layer for knowledge work and M365: - Understands who you are, what you work on, who you work with - Powers M365 Copilot, Copilot Chat, Word/Excel/PowerPoint Agents - Enables Copilot Chat to reason over entire inboxes - Provides personalized, context-aware responses in flow of work **Fabric IQ** - Shared business logic layer (New Announcement): - Extends 20 million Power BI semantic models beyond analytics into operations - Defines business entities and relationships across all data in OneLake - Provides humans and AI with shared understanding of business logic - Enables consistent, accurate reasoning across agents - Integrated with M365 for automatic security flow - Geospatial capabilities for regional analysis - Triggers rules and automated decision-making - Demo: Pop-up store location recommendation improved dramatically when agent used Fabric IQ for business context **Foundry IQ** - Agentic context engineering (New Announcement): - First large-scale implementation of context engineering for agents (extending RAG) - Plans, reasons, and iterates across Work IQ, Fabric IQ, Blob storage, web, unstructured data - Supports multi-agent systems with hosted agents (handles deployment, lifecycle, auto-scaling) - Access to 1,400+ enterprise-ready tools and MCP servers - A-to-A (Agent-to-Agent) compatible across Foundry, Copilot Studio, third-party systems - Integrates with Foundry Video Indexer for real-time video analysis - Agent memory for personalized, context-aware interactions ### Trust: Security and Compliance **Core Principles:** - Observability at every layer of the stack - Alignment with organizational principles and regulatory requirements - Proactive threat detection and response - Data governance and sovereignty commitments **Implementation:** - Agent 365 provides enterprise-wide agent visibility and control - Foundry Control Plane offers developer-level observability - Microsoft Security (Defender, Purview, Entra) protects people and agents - Azure provides data residency in 33 countries across 70+ regions - Clear sovereignty commitments for data and AI management - Content Authenticity Initiative (Microsoft + Adobe partnership) for intellectual property protection --- ## Major Product Announcements ### M365 and Copilot **Copilot Chat Enhancements:** - Word, Excel, and PowerPoint Agents now available in Copilot Chat - Can reason over and summarize entire inbox - Included with every M365 subscription at no additional cost - Enterprise data protection and agent access built-in **Security Copilot:** - Included in M365 E5 licenses - AI-powered protection and response in flow of work - Phishing Triage Agent autonomously filters false alarms - Explains reasoning with visual decision graphs - Natural language threat analysis **App Builder:** - Create fully functioning apps inside M365 Copilot in minutes - Uses existing M365 data powered by Work IQ - Natural language interface (no coding required) - Apps built on organizational data with proper security - Share apps like documents across teams ### GitHub **GitHub Copilot Evolution:** - From pair programmer to fleet of coding agents - Largest individual code contributor on GitHub - Gemini 3 Pro support added (in addition to OpenAI, Anthropic, custom models) **Agent HQ (New):** - Centralized management for all coding tasks and agent sessions - Assign issues to AI agents like human teammates - Agents create branches, write code, open pull requests - Manage tasks across local chats, CLI sessions, third-party agents - Start and monitor cloud-based agent tasks from VS Code **Copilot Metrics (New):** - Enterprise visibility into GitHub Copilot usage - Model usage statistics and programming language analysis - Team adoption and engagement insights **Defender + GitHub Advanced Security Integration (New):** - Code-to-cloud security integration - Filter vulnerabilities using runtime data (sensitive data, production exposure) - Security campaigns with deadlines for teams - Automated fix generation in single pull requests - Continuous security from development to production ### Microsoft Foundry **Anthropic Partnership (New Major Announcement):** - Claude Sonnet 4.5, Haiku 4.5, Opus 4.1 now available in public preview on Microsoft Foundry - Claude integrated into GitHub Copilot Agent HQ as first-class agent - Claude Skills + Work IQ for enterprise agent development - Capabilities: PDF generation, planning, content creation, coding assistance - No separate vendor contracts or billing (integrated into Microsoft invoicing) **Model Router - General Availability:** - Automatically selects optimal model based on accuracy, performance, cost, or balanced optimization - Enforces US and EU data boundaries by default - Customers seeing 50% lower latency and 15% higher quality - Supports all Foundry models (OpenAI, Mistral, DeepSeek, Llama, Anthropic, custom models) **Foundry Ecosystem:** - 80,000+ organizations building on Foundry - #1 AI platform in the world - Same-day access to latest open-source and frontier model releases - Model comparison capabilities in catalog - Hosted agents with automatic deployment, lifecycle management, scaling - 1,400+ enterprise-ready tools and MCP servers - Multi-agent orchestration (LangGraph, Microsoft Agent Framework, custom frameworks) **Foundry Control Plane (New):** - Full observability for developer-built agents - Error tracking, evaluation metrics, guardrails - Model performance and cost analytics - Jailbreak detection and blocking - Integration with Agent 365 for enterprise management ### Azure **AKS Automatic - General Availability:** - Production-ready Kubernetes with built-in best practices - Preconfigured security, reliability, governance - Code to cluster deployment in minutes - Automated deployments, auto-healing, automatic patching - Built-in security safeguards - Powers ChatGPT and mission-critical workloads - Enables scalability with minimal operational resources **Azure HorizonDB (New):** - Cloud-native PostgreSQL scale-out solution - Fully compatible with PostgreSQL - Scales to 3,000+ cores and 128 terabytes of storage - Sub-millisecond multi-zone commit latency - In-database AI, vector indexing, semantic search - Integrated with Azure AI for seamless innovation **Infrastructure Milestones:** - **NVIDIA GB300 GPUs:** First cloud provider to deploy at scale; more GB300s than any competitor - 11x performance vs H100s, 12x vs AWS Trainium2 - New Atlanta data center: 20 football fields, hundreds of thousands of GPUs - Delivers 10x performance of world's fastest supercomputer - 93% cost reduction for GPT-4 models over two years - **Azure Cobalt:** ARM64 silicon with industry-leading price-performance (2x improvement for .NET apps) - Cobalt 200: 50% better performance, best price-performance VM in Azure **Sustainability Commitments:** - 100% renewable energy for data centers by end of year - Largest buyer of renewable energy globally - Liquid-cooled facilities with closed-loop water systems - Zero water waste (initial 20-home water fill reused for 6 years) - 70+ Azure regions with data residency in 33 countries **Azure Copilot Migration Agents (New):** - Six new agents for workload migration and modernization - Creates landing zones for legacy app migration - IaaS and PaaS modernization options - Automated inventory discovery (VMware, on-premise) - Assessment reports with readiness scoring - GitHub integration for code modernization insights - Containerization automation for AKS deployment **Cosmos DB Highlights:** - Powers ChatGPT and M365 Copilot for hundreds of millions of users - Stores petabytes of data with trillions of transactions - Elastic scaling with zero downtime - Five nines (99.999%) availability - Low latency at global scale - Pay only for actual usage (storage and throughput) **Microsoft Fabric and OneLake:** - Unified data platform from raw data to AI/BI value - OneLake: Unified data lake for all enterprise data (structured and unstructured) - Shortcuts to BigQuery, Databricks, Oracle, Snowflake, SharePoint - No data copying or movement - seamless access - SQL Analytics endpoint for cross-cloud unified queries - **Fabric IQ:** Semantic layer giving data meaning for agents and Power BI - Integration with Work IQ for consistent business logic across platforms ### Security and Governance **Agent 365 - Now Available in Preview:** - Enterprise agent control plane in M365 Admin Center - Centralized registry, risk assessment, approval workflows - Agent Map for visualizing relationships and dependencies - Integration with Defender, Purview, Entra - Partner ecosystem: SAP, Adobe, OpenAI, Anthropic, Workday, ServiceNow, Manus **Microsoft Security for Agents:** - Threat protection from 100 trillion daily security signals - Jailbreak attempt detection and blocking - Phishing protection for agent-targeted attacks - Sensitive data access prevention - Unified incident investigation across Foundry, Defender, Purview - Shared security primitives protecting both people and agents --- ## Microsoft Agent Factory **Announcement:** Unified offering combining Work IQ, Fabric IQ, and Foundry IQ through single metering system. **Purpose:** - Automate business processes (claims processing, freight forwarding, supply chain) - Measure ROI upfront for business outcomes - Access to forward-deployed engineers and Microsoft partners - Integrated skilling and enablement resources **Value Proposition:** One way to harness the full power of Microsoft's AI platform with measurable business impact from day one. --- ## Industry Applications and Customer Stories ### Healthcare - Epic **Adoption Scale:** - AI embedded throughout Epic applications from clinic to bedside to back office - Hundreds of thousands of clinicians using AI globally - 6 million medical record summaries generated monthly - Doctors discover missed information 28% of the time vs manual review - 69% early-stage cancer diagnosis rate (vs 46% national average) using AI **Capabilities:** - AI-generated nurse shift notes and discharge summaries - Microsoft DAX Copilot for ambient clinical documentation - 30-40% reduction in prior authorization time - Patient chart summarization before visits - Automated preparation of orders and follow-ups - MyChart delivers personalized post-visit tasks to patients **Foundation:** Azure provides secure, reliable environment for sensitive healthcare data enabling rapid global AI rollout. ### Automotive - Mercedes-Benz **Adoption Highlights:** - Expanding M365 Copilot from 10,000 to all employees - 52 business areas building their own agents in Copilot Studio - Finance team automated invoicing workflow without IT or coding - GitHub Copilot increasing developer engagement by 70% - Developers focus on creative and logic tasks while AI handles routine coding **Factory Innovation:** - **MO360 Data Platform:** Connects 30 passenger plants globally with real-time and historical data - **Digital Factory Chat:** Multi-agent AI system providing instant actionable insights - Quality assurance diagnosis reduced from days (team of experts) to minutes (AI agents) - Specialized agents analyze production data and generate consolidated reports - Underlying data and code outputs available for validation and transparency **Sustainability:** - AI-powered climate control in paint shops - Real-time sensor data optimization for temperature and humidity - 20%+ energy consumption reduction in paint operations - Scaling AI-driven energy optimization across Rastatt plant **Digital Twins:** - NVIDIA Omniverse on Azure for factory-scale digital twins - Six production plants including Kecskemét site - Design, test, and optimize production lines before physical changes - Unprecedented agility in planning for market demands **Hey Mercedes:** - Voice assistant powered by Azure OpenAI and Bing - Third workspace (office, home, car) for productivity on the road - Natural conversation for weather, navigation, calendar, calls, notes - Provides real-time information (Golden Gate Bridge, Microsoft Ignite event details) ### Financial Services - UBS **Cloud Adoption:** - 50%+ of workloads in cloud - 100+ Azure services deployed - Largest Azure user in financial services industry - Cloud journey began 2014 with infrastructure modernization - Focus on cloud-native applications, not lift-and-shift **STAAT Assist:** - Smart Technologies and Advanced Analytics Team solution - Embedded in Outlook as side panel for financial advisors - Automatically classifies client emails and extracts key information - Retrieves account details, withdrawal limits, available cash, transfer guidelines - Auto-populates transfer request forms for single-click approval - Provides investment research summaries and market insights on demand - Real-time access to fund information and import tax impact analysis - Reduces administrative time, increases client-facing advisory time **Data Foundation:** - Enterprise data mesh program for solid data foundation - Strong data governance for highly regulated environment - GDPR and HIPAA compliance built into architecture - AI journey built on 10+ years of cloud investment ### Other Industries **Agriculture - Land O'Lakes:** - AI provides agronomists like Tyler with instant access to 850-page Crop Protection Guide - Data-driven insights help farmers maximize return on investment - Faster decision-making during critical harvest periods **Industrial Automation - Siemens:** - AI reduces time-consuming coding tasks - Engineers focus on creating new solutions vs tedious work - Empowers makers at heart to innovate on factory floor **Consumer Goods - Nestlé:** - Digital product twins for thousands of products (KitKat, Nespresso) - AI-powered personalized and scalable content creation - Localized marketing at unprecedented scale **Education - São Paulo Secretary of Education:** - AI essay correction tool provides instant personalized feedback - Students receive initial guidance before teacher review - Teachers save hours on corrections, reinvest in lesson planning and student engagement **Retail - Telstra:** - Ask Telstra tool provides retail associates with instant product answers - Handles complex product portfolio with real-time expertise - Enables quality customer care and employee satisfaction **Biotech - Insilico Medicine:** - AI accelerates drug discovery from decades to days - Target identification and molecular design via AI simulations - 30 drug candidates already developed using AI - Potential to find breakthrough treatments faster than ever --- ## Partner Ecosystem ### Adobe Partnership **Integration Areas:** - Third-party model support in Photoshop (Adobe Firefly, MAI, OpenAI, others) - Agentic workflows in Acrobat and marketing products - Creativity embedded in M365 - Marketing stack integration with Microsoft Sales and Service platforms - Data governance collaboration for enterprise trust - **Content Authenticity Initiative:** 5,000+ partners protecting creator intellectual property and content provenance - Both companies use each other's products (Adobe uses GitHub Copilot; Microsoft uses Adobe marketing solutions) ### Agent 365 Launch Partners **Announced Partners:** - Classic app vendors: SAP, Adobe, Workday, ServiceNow - AI-forward companies: OpenAI, Anthropic, Manus - Dozens of additional large and small companies integrating **Partner Focus Areas:** - Integrating AI into existing enterprise workflows - Managing shadow AI (providing adequate tooling to prevent personal AI tool usage) - Balancing compliance with innovation velocity - Ensuring trustworthy deployment at scale - Moving fast while staying in control (F1 driver analogy) **ServiceNow Example:** - AstraZeneca using ServiceNow AI Control Tower for lab workflows - Saving 90,000 hours for researchers to focus on life-saving drug development - "See AI, trust AI, scale AI" approach to observability **Workday Example:** - From guardians to enablers mindset - Deep M365 integration becomes default path for employees - Agent system of record for governance - Entra Agent ID for identity and interaction tracking --- ## Key Metrics and Scale **Adoption:** - 90%+ of Fortune 500 using M365 Copilot - 230,000+ organizations using Copilot Studio - 80,000+ organizations building on Microsoft Foundry - LinkedIn serves 1.3 billion professionals - Billions of Word docs created monthly - Hundreds of millions of PowerPoint presentations and Teams meetings weekly - 20,000+ attendees at Ignite San Francisco - 200,000+ watching online globally - 70+ announcements during Ignite week **Technical Scale:** - 100 trillion security signals daily - 70+ Azure regions worldwide - Data residency in 33 countries - 20 million Power BI semantic models - 1,400+ enterprise tools and MCP servers in Foundry - ChatGPT scales across tens of millions of compute cores with ~12 engineers using AKS **AI Cost Evolution:** - 93% cost reduction for GPT-4 over two years - Continued infrastructure innovation driving further cost reductions - 90%+ AI cost reductions through Azure infrastructure improvements **Future Projections:** - 1.3 billion agents deployed globally by 2028 (IDC prediction) - More AI agents than human agents in near future --- ## Foundational Themes **Frontier Transformation vs AI Transformation:** AI transformation often fails due to: 1. Misalignment between business leaders and IT 2. Data quality challenges 3. Governance and regulatory constraints 4. Excess experimentation without scaled deployment **Frontier Success Framework:** 1. Align AI to customer experience and real-time engagement 2. Reshape business processes end-to-end 3. Use AI to innovate and bend the competitive curve 4. Shift from technology-led to business-led transformation **Democratizing Intelligence:** - Human ambition at the center - AI assistants and agents amplify capabilities - Obsolesce the mundane, unlock creativity and innovation - Every employee gains maker capabilities - Person closest to problem empowered to solve it **Constructive Tension:** - Innovation must be balanced with governance - Observability enables both rapid experimentation and control - Safe path should be the easiest path - Enterprises move from guardians to enablers --- ## Closing Vision Microsoft's mission is to empower every person and organization to achieve more by enabling all organizations to become Frontier Firms. This is achieved through: 1. **AI in the flow of human ambition** - embedded in tools people already use daily 2. **Ubiquitous innovation** - every employee empowered to create agents and solutions 3. **Observability at every layer** - comprehensive governance and security Built on foundational pillars of: - **Intelligence:** Work IQ, Fabric IQ, Foundry IQ providing unmatched contextual understanding - **Trust:** Agent 365, Foundry Control Plane, Microsoft Security ensuring safety and compliance All powered by Azure as the world's AI supercomputer, providing infrastructure, platform services, sustainability commitments, and global scale to bring frontier transformation to life for organizations worldwide. --- **Document notes:** This normalized version summarizes the Microsoft Ignite 2025 KEY01 keynote into a professional executive summary format. The original 780+ line verbatim transcript has been condensed to approximately 15-20% of original length while preserving all substantive content, announcements, metrics, and key themes. Content is organized by topic with bullet points for clarity. No verbatim dialogue is included - all content has been summarized and professionally formatted for business reference use.